Long Term Fix for wmic – Keeping Check WMI Plus alive

by Posted on

If you want to keep wmic (and therefore Check WMI Plus) alive then please get involved in the Kickstarter project.

Let’s face it. The wmic client, upon which Check WMI Plus relies is pretty old and starting to show its age, especially with the latest changes to Windows. At some point in 2022 we expect it to just stop working with the latest versions of Windows as Microsoft makes the latest changes (as per their announcements – you are probably already seeing the warnings in your event logs).

There is no apparent owner for the wmic client. It is not our software, we don’t know how to code a replacement and check_wmi_plus was always a spare-time-project which we can easily drop. However, it would seem that the check_wmi_plus project is probably the central place for this problem to be sorted.

The only way that I can see to go forward is to build some replacement software that will have a solid home where it can continue to grow and be supported indefinitely into the future.

This original wmic client appeared as part of Samba (“the standard Windows interoperability suite of programs for Linux and Unix”). In my mind, the new WMI client should go back into the Samba project for reasons such as:
  • They already have Windows interaction skills/knowledge 
  • Samba is very popular and long lived

We see this as being a two stage process

  1. Design a new client and determine feasibility
  2. Build a new client

To this end we have started a Kickstarter project to try and collect funding to pay for the design and feasibility stage.

This stage will be to raise funds to pay for a new design of a wmic client that will work well into the future. The new design is expected to address some of the existing shortcomings of the existing wmic client, such as authentication, scalability etc
For this stage, we propose to engage Catalyst (one of the contributors to Samba https://www.catalyst.net.nz/products/samba-windows-integration)  to design a new WMI client. The funding is to pay them for the design as well as for some of our time to manage this. The design would include a fixed-price quote for the development of the new WMI client.
Stage 2 would require funding to actually develop the WMIC client based on the design. At this point, we would also look to make the new WMI a permanent part of Samba.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wmiclient/linux-wmi-client-design

Published by admin